80% of B2B Digital Marketing is Broken

80%of B2B Digital Marketing is Hurting Sales
rokenB
Brand new 2016 Thames Valley & Solent B2B Digital Benchmarketing Report
shows what’s wrong – and how you can fix it fast

BThe days of leaving your “digital footprint” in the hands of your
website developer or a marketing intern are long gone.
For a long time, business leaders and sales
professionals have succeeded without needing
a good understanding of how to get noticed online.
And that was fine then. But things have changed.
- Users got more demanding.
- Your competitors got more
technically savvy.
- And technology has changed. A lot.

Hire our team
How we know this
We analysed the “digital footprint” of 509 of the top
business-to-business organisations in the Thames Valley
and Solent and discovered:
80% of these companies have fundamental problems with
their online presence that directly impact their sales. *
* We’re planning to repeat the research every year to see what changes

Starting at the start
Your digital footprint is the imprint you make on the
online world.
Google your own name, for example, and you’ll get
an idea of what other people might see. Or try ours.
Try it now. You may be surprised.

This is what happens when you Google Sharp Ahead.

‘True wisdom is knowing
what you don’t know.’
Confucius, about 570BC

So, are you one of the 80%?
Before you fix something, you have
to understand what’s broken.
89% of business to business (B2B) customers search online before
making a decision. If they can’t find you, they won’t buy from you.
That’s what we mean by “broken”. To fix it, people have to able to find you.

There are an estimated 177,000,000
live websites today.*
Thames Valley and the Solent are home
to more than 10,000 businesses.
Many are based in the same cities, with similar names, or offering similar products or services. You don’t
have to be a mathematical genius to work out that lots of businesses want to be found online, just like you.
* There are actually about a billion live URLs, but many of these are not in use

Things have changed
If your digital presence is poor, then:
So businesses need to change too
1 No new prospects will
find you online.
2 People that already know
you still won’t be able to find
you online – or if they do find
you, this won’t make them
more inclined to buy from you.

Google is
your homepage*
You’ll often hear people say that your website home page is your shop window.
But in 2015, with Google Search, Google My Business and Google Plus all heavily used, there’s
a chance that prospects will make their mind up about you before they even reach your website.
*Google actually is our homepage

Five weeks
of research
We have looked at three things for every one
of the 509 companies in our survey.
It took us rather a long time. Rob has a rather sore neck
and tired eyes. But we think it was worth it.

8 signals of success
(or failure)
We identified 8 “key digital marketing signals”.
Then we gave each a weighting based on how
important they are.
Then we scored each business to find out how likely
it is would be that a customer or prospect could
find them and then find the information they needed.
What’s your score?

A quick technical point
We’ve grouped these signals into
two broad categories:
1 The Search User Experience
– what happens to people before
they hit your website.
2 The Onsite User Experience
– what happens when a person
arrives on the site.
There are 4things to look out for in each category.

Let’s start with
search user
experience.
After all, that’s where prospects and customers usually start.

Signal #1
Natural Search for Brand Term.
This is where you appear “naturally” when people search for your company name.
98% of companies surveyed ranked in #1 position for their own name.
Sound good? Not so good for the 23 companies surveyed that have no
digital footprint at all; or for the 19companies who are not top for their own name;
or for the 2 companies that are in #10 position for their own company name.
Search User Experience

Why this is this happening.
And what you can do about it.
If you are in the 2% that don’t appear in a natural search against your brand name,
here are three things you can do easily:
1 If you haven’t got one
already – build a website
(or ask Sharp Ahead to
build you a landing page
– a quick and easy way
to get online fast)
2 Ask the person that looks
after your website to make
sure that your site has been
submitted to Google and
is visible to search engines
3 Ask the person that looks
after your website to check
that the “headings” and
“metadata” correctly
represent your business.

This should at least make
sure that you appear.
So what’s next?

Signal #2
Google my Business.
Google my Business is free.
It combines what used to be Google+ local with Google Places.
It offers people lots of information about your business – so much so that
some buyers will bypass your website entirely.*
*read more in the blog post “Google is now your Homepage”

79% of companies not using
Google my Business.
For most businesses, this means a missed sales opportunity.
The words “is this your business?”
at the bottom of an unclaimed Google
my Business listing will make you look
unprofessional and may put buyers off.
Needhelp?

A Google my Business Disaster.
For example, if other businesses have similar names to yours, not claiming
your Google my Business page will do one of two things:
BAD
Confuse potential buyers.
WORST
Send your prospects running into your
competitors’ arms.

Which
business
is this?
(don’t make it hard for
prospects to find you).
Unclaimed listing

Signal #3
Use of Google AdWords.
AdWords is brilliant.
It’s a tool created by the giant of all search engines that allows you to
improve your visibility not just against your company name, but against
a whole host of relevant keywords.
If search user experience is important to you (and it should be) then you
ignore AdWords at your peril.

71% of business-to-business buyers
start with a generic search.*
AdWords can help you
generate business by
making sure these
buyers see you before
they see your competitors.
Fact.
*Research by Snyder and Hilal 2015

Just 21% of companies in our audit
have ever used Google AdWords.
Here’s why.
1 It can be complicated to
set up correctly. You really
need an expert to manage
it for you, or you could
end up spending money
on the wrong things.
2 Many individuals have tried
using AdWords and “failed”.
3 It costs money – specifically
“cost per click” or “cost
per ‘000 impressions”.

None of these means that AdWords is wrong for your business.
It just means it hasn’t been managed properly.
1 No one clicks on the ad
– at least this hasn’t cost you
anything, but you’ve done
something wrong in the way
you’ve tried to reach your
target customers.
2 The wrong people click
on the ad – you may know
this specifically because
you’ve spoken to them.
It’s more likely that they’ve
simply failed to convert,
and you’ve assumed that
this is because they are
the wrong people.
3 The wrong destination
– usually this happens
when people are sent from
an ad to your home page,
and this doesn’t reflect
either what the person
typed into Google search,
or the promise in your ad.
AdWords “failure”.

Signal #4
Re-Marketing.
(Remarketing is what it says on the
tin. It’s a way of advertising directly
to people that have already visited
your website or landing page, or
searched for companies like yours).
RE-MARKETING
Used by 5.9%
of companies

Today’s business buyers do not
contact suppliers directly until 57%
of the purchase process is complete.
Remarketing is the most targeted way to ensure you are front of mind and redirect prospects back
to your site. It’s most usual (and cost-effective) to remarket to prospects on Google or on Facebook
(yes, even for business-to-business companies).
Source: New research from CEB’s Marketing Leadership Council
Needhelp?

Facebook?
You have to be kidding!
We don’t advocate a lot of Facebook activity for many business-to-business
companies unless you have a lot of time and resources to do this effectively.*
BUT remarketing works on Facebook even if you don’t have a company
presence there, because you are only targeting people that you already
know are interested in you because they’ve visited your website or landing
page already.
*SimplyBusiness is a brilliant example – look them up on Facebook later if you have time.

On average, Facebook remarketing
is available at a lower cost-per-click
than search engine marketing.
It also generates a higher click-through-rate.
For our clients, we estimate it reduces the cost-per-lead
by about 50% compared to other channels.
Hire our team

We’ve talked a bit
about search
Now it’s time to look
at your website.

Signal #5
On-Site User Experience
– Responsiveness.
In digital terms, responsiveness means simply
that your website and other digital assets
(landing pages or emails for example) work
equally well on different devices and screen sizes.
On-site User Experience
Responsiveness
re·spon·sive
adj.
1. Answering or replying; responding.
re·spon’sive·ly adv.
re·spon’sive·ness n.

Good Bad

See what we mean?

Why responsiveness matters.
1 For users.
If you make it difficult for people to engage with
what you want to say, they will go somewhere else.

2 For Google.
We’re predicting that by 2020 Google will stop
showing non-responsive sites (gulp).
Google and all the other search engines constantly rewrite the code that decides which websites will rank
highest and so be more visible. Early in 2015 Google threatened big penalties for non-responsive content.
And although the impact hasn’t been as significant as anticipated, this will only increase over time.

3 For You.
70% of business to business executives use
smartphones and tablets to research product and
service information* but only 40% of the sites
we surveyed in 2015 were responsive.
* Source: Forbes

Still not convinced?
Look at the impact*
changing to a responsive website had for O’Neill in 2013:
O’Neill Clothing Responsive Redesign.
65.7% conversion
rate increase on
iPhone/iPod.
101.2% revenue
growth on
iPhone/iPod.
407.3% conversion
rate increase on
Android devices.
591.4% revenue
growth on Android
devices.
20.3% conversion
rate increase on non-
mobile devices.
41.1% revenue
growth on non-mobile
devices.
* Source: http://electricpulp.com/notes/you-like-apples/

Signal #6
Overall On-Site User Experience.
We created a scoring system for the websites in our survey based
on the ease of use of the site, its layout and design.
In our survey, only 11.1%
of businesses offered a
“good” user experience.*
* We worked this out using a combination of Nielsen’s
usability criteria with our own analysis of the primary
audience for the site

What’s a good
user experience?
An average of 7 different people are
involved in any business-to-business buying
decision in the UK today.*
A good user experience will allow any one of these people
(from CEO to procurement manager to junior administrator)
to get from the page where they arrive at the site to the
information they need, in the quickest and easiest way possible.
* Source: Gartner

Fixing your UX.
First: Understand what’s wrong – pick a “persona”
and map their user experience.
Next: Update your current site if you can. Or if your
site is very dated, then consider building landing
pages that optimise conversion.
Long term: If the user journey is long, complex or
difficult, you may need a new website eventually.
We can help

Still with us?
Good. You’re obviously serious
about improving sales.

Signal #7
Google Analytics.
This is a free tool that can help you convert more leads.*
It allows anyone you nominate to monitor who’s visiting your website and how
they are behaving, and to make changes to improve the performance of your site.
84% of companies in our audit were using Google Analytics.
But less than 1 in 3 have set it up correctly and know how to read the data.**
* If you’re not sure whether you have this set up, ask your website admin, or contact us and we can check for you.
** Based on our experience working with clients in the Thames Valley and Solent areas

Signal #7 and a half
Google Tag Manager.
Google Tag Manager is also free, but a bit more geeky.
It allows website administrators to add and change tags to allow you
to manage your digital footprint without editing the website code.
This can help you improve the user experience both in search
mode and on-site.
Only 7% of companies in the audit were using it.

Signal #8
HTTPS.

Why HTTPS matters.
On-site
With cyber crime on the increase,
people can be nervous about giving
away information. Not good for
lead generation.
For search
Google has added HTTPS to the rules
they use to decide where you show up
in a search. This is a low priority right
now, but will definitely increase in
importance over the next few years.

Good News.
1 Only 2% of your competitors are
using HTTPS right now.
So if you are already planning
on building a new website, include
this now for an immediate
competitive advantage.
2 Unlike responsive design,
HTTPS is still in its infancy.
So there’s no immediate need
to make a massive change
unless you work in a sector
where your prospects are more
sensitive to security issues.

Let’s not kid ourselves.
Sorting out your onsite and search user experience needn’t be hard.
BUT even though you’ve made it through this deck to page 47
(bravo), UX is still not at the top of your “to do” list.
If you’d like to attract more customers online,
however, it’s more important than ever before.
In fact it’s critical.

Bottom Line.
You’d like your business to be more
successful online.
It’s time to raise your game. Invest
a little time now to get things right.
Or prepare to sit back and wave
at your competitors’ behinds as
they pass you by.

Thank you
You can read more at www.sharpahead.com/
You can also request the research data by clicking here.
Or you can just hire us. We’d really like that.
0118 9485 766 | info@sharpahead.com
Source information for all the data is listed on our website at sharpahead.com
This report was prepared on behalf of SharpAhead by our creative partners in crime, BHP. They are based in the same
offices as us and can help you with creative marketing and strategy if that’s your bag.
Sharp Ahead, Fountain House, Floor 8, Queens Walk, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 7QE

80% of B2B Digital Marketing is Broken

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